New York Observer Story

"It would be so hard for me to wear a brand," said Ken Tanabe, a 27-year-old designer with a slim build and friendly eyes. Like so many twentysomething Parsons grads/frustrated musicians/Williamsburg residents, Mr. Tanabe makes a living "making brands." He's designed logos for WorldCom and animated Web movies for MTV and MAC cosmetics.

But Mr. Tanabe's body is brand-free. The D.C. native, who is of Japanese-Belgian descent, buys sneakers by the obscure Italian label Fessura, clothes from the East Village store Ohmash, and swears he hasn't worn a brand since the Doc Martens era of high school. "My wardrobe," he said, "is actually pretty Pattern Recognition."

Pattern Recognition, now two years old, was the first straight fiction novel by renowned sci-fi author William Gibson, about a "cool hunter" named Cayce Pollard who is allergic to fashion. Her authenticity radar"”precisely what makes her an apt marketer"”also renders her woozy at the sight of brand logos, particularly the Michelin Man or a Tommy Hilfiger rack. To protect herself, she dresses exclusively in what her ex-boyfriend dubs "CPUs" or Cayce Pollard Units: unbranded, unadorned and ageless items in black, white and gray with all the labels and logos torn, razor-bladed or rubbed off. The book sold decently, but its real influence lurks in the minds and consumption patterns of its readers: Many of the same people who disliked Mr. Gibson's attempt to strip the "science" from his "science fiction" also surreptitiously use Pattern Recognition as a fashion Bible.

"I do wear logoless clothes as my default," said Seth Stevenson, a Slate and New York Times magazine contributor who studies marketing. Mr. Stevenson wasn't a fan of Pattern Recognition; nevertheless, he readily admits to cutting the labels off clothing, most recently from a North Face jacket given to him as a holiday gift. The Gibson novel, while ultimately in his eyes a "failure," made him think harder about brand choices (though he decided against removing the New Balance "N" from his sneakers). "The idea of her character," he said, "was actually brilliant."

Mr. Stevenson is one of many writers, designers, marketers and generally over-observant city dwellers who have come to view "coolhunting" as a significant, if unfortunate, part of their job descriptions. It all started with Malcolm Gladwell's 1997 New Yorker story, "The Coolhunt," about a couple of marketers paid by clothing companies to keep abreast of "trend-setting" teenagers in urban high schools. Last year Scott Westerfeld, a science-fiction writer, published a young-adult novel, So Yesterday, about a 17-year-old coolhunter named "Hunter," who's employed by a giant sneaker company but finds himself relating to what he calls the "Logo Exiles""”kids who are, like Cayce, turned off by logos and marketing.

Such teens and twentysomethings are increasingly common in New York, said Matt Marcus, a 32-year-old "trend strategist." In fact, the students of his "Cool Hunting" class at Parson's School of Design last semester started noticing so many fastidiously inconspicuous types, they gave the consumer class a name: "Easy Street."

"They know what's up, they just choose not to participate," Mr. Marcus said. "The American Apparels of this world exploit that image."

John Harvey, a Jersey City painter and sometime filmmaker with a day job animating promotional spots for the Soho firm EyeballNYC, has found himself taking the "Easy Street" in recent years. As with Cayce, a near-autistic awareness of trends in fashion, design and marketing are part of Mr. Harvey's vocation, and arguably his genetic makeup. He seeks solace in unbranded gray and black clothes. But the impetus to boycott color and logos should not be confused with some sort of Naomi Klein–inspired anti-corporate rebellion, Mr. Harvey cautioned. Rather, it's mere exhaustion.

"When you're in design and your whole life is coming up with this stupid crap, floral patterns and whatnot, you just can't handle it"”you need to cut it out," he said.

Mr. Harvey, 32, admits he couldn't help but make a fashion muse out of Mr. Gibson's fictional Cayce. "After I read the book, I remember Googling her jacket," he said, referring to the Japanese Buzz Rickson's military jacket that Pollard wears throughout the novel. "I wanted that jacket."

Mr. Harvey has fallen off the anti-brandwagon before; a few weekends ago, he shelled out $190 for a pair of pony-hair-adorned sneakers at the new boutique in Soho that sells clothes by the Japanese label A Bathing Ape (or Bape, for short).

Josh Rubin, the Soho-based designer behind the Web site Josh Rubin: Cool Hunting, said that Pattern Recognition didn't so much change his behavior or buying habits as it provided a "label" for his madness. Mr. Rubin said he experiences a "gut response" to logos.

"I'll be razor-blading off a label and think, ˜That's so Cayce Pollard,'" he said. "Like the other day, I cut out the embroidery of a logo off my snowboarding bag. It was just this small company's name in cursive with a little swooshy thing, and it looked so bad, it just offended me."

Mr. Rubin's personal nemesis is the revived logo Von Dutch, recently popularized by the likes of Paris Hilton and Justin Timberlake. "I'm not sure I've gotten physically ill or wanted to vomit ... but I don't understand it," he said. "It doesn't resonate or make sense to me in any way. I definitely have the recoiling thing with Von Dutch."

Like many such coolhunters, New York trend watcher Faith Popcorn, who prefers the title "futurist," was struck by the similarities between Cayce and herself. "Not only does she have an intuitive reaction to bad branding, her father was in the C.I.A.," she said. "And my father was in the C.I.A.!"

Ms. Popcorn, who calls Pattern Recognition her "favorite book," even employs a Cayce Pollardesque dress code at her trend-forecasting firm, BrainReserve: There are no visible brands, patterns, colors or loud jewelry allowed. BrainReservists are allowed to dress out of code on Fridays, but Ms. Popcorn (real name: Faith Plotkin) said they usually show up in code anyway.

"People just feel better in black"”and when that's all they have, it becomes comfortable," she added.

A former Reservist, who requested anonymity, was hesitant to laud the BrainReserve dress code, but agreed that being so intimately involved in evaluating and carrying out guerrilla marketing campaigns had made her appreciate the purity of clothes that hadn't been marketed to her.

"Once you know how the whole branding machine works, you just hate it," the former Reservist said. "I'm totally allergic."

Ms. Popcorn herself has no need to sandpaper the labels off her clothing: Her wardrobe consists entirely of black Issey Miyake and Giorgio Armani (her dog is named Miyake). But she rattled off seven trends that Pattern Recognition–style dressing was consistent with, among them "icon toppling" and "rip and stitch," before finally concluding: "People are just sick of it."

What people are sick of, said Mr. Marcus, the Parson's professor of coolhunting, is Malcolm Gladwell"”or at least Malcolm Gladwell–inspired marketing campaigns. Mr. Marcus traces his own "subdued," mostly monochrome sartorial tendencies to the day he first heard a word to describe what he did"”the day he read Mr. Gladwell's New Yorker article.

"Malcolm Gladwell defining the way trends start and spread destroyed the whole thing, because it created companies and pundits and people, like myself, who are paid to create trends that way," he said. "Now it's everywhere. Even the President, when he paid that guy to write about his ˜No Child Left Behind' policies"”that's whisper marketing. So you naturally no longer want to be a part of it." Mr. Marcus added that his wardrobe these days tends toward anonymous black H. and M. pieces.

To some, of course, the appeal of the code of Cayce isn't so complex.

"There's a reason black is black," said Chris Garvin, a design professor and Pattern Recognition fan. "It's easier to take care of. It goes with everything. Cayce Pollard had taste."

Not every jaded designer who eschews colors and logos is reacting to something; for some, the act of dressing colorlessly and brandlessly is simply common sense.

"I dress like Einstein dressed: gray sweater, gray pants. It is a sign of intelligence," declared Zoran, the mononymic designer whose zipper- and button-free black-and-gray collections have been cult hits at Saks for 30 years. In Zoran's view, Madame Jiang Qing, the late wife of Mao Zedong who imposed the navy blue "Mao suit" uniform upon the People's Republic of China, is the quintessential fashion icon.

"She got a billion people to dress in that outfit, and they looked great! Now you go to China and they are all so confused," he said from Milan, where he keeps one of his four houses. To Zoran, simplicity of dress denotes security, whereas colors and pattern indicate that a person"”particularly a woman"”is insecure and confused, that her priorities are out of order.

"Just look at the subway," he said. "Look at all the women on the subway dressing for each other, dressed like Sex and the City, like Barbie dolls. They look great, and then they go home and they eat spam for dinner!"

Indeed, Ms. Popcorn-Plotkin concurred, "I've noticed the Desperate Housewives all wear very glitzy clothing"”maybe because they're not very Zen."

Of course, these days it can involve as much aggravation to dress in Cayce Pollard Units as it does to look like a desperate housewife. While most amateur and professional coolhunters had taken the simple brand-removal step of switching their iPods' white "earbuds" for black ones, no one had gone so far as to sandpaper the buttons of his Levis buttons, as Mr. Gibson describes Cayce doing.

Alex Wipperfürth, a San Francisco–based marketer and author of the new book Brand Hijack, who confessed to a "huge crush on Cayce," bemoaned the effort it required to sandpaper the G-Star logo off his new jeans. (To be sure, though, his girlfriend was sandpapering them for him.)

Really the only way out of the brandosphere, said Mr. Rubin the coolhunter, is "buying your own goat. Or moving to Amish country."

So some people buy shoes they are NOT supposed to wear? WOW. Perfect marketing. Sell something people wouldn't even use. I wonder what they are selling here, maybe the ACT of buying the shoes itself IS the product, the feeling of "I'm so cool, buying these japanase horse hair sneakers". SICK. Very sick.WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE? Oh my GOD!!!!"I dress like Einstein dressed: gray sweater, gray pants. It is a sign of intelligence" "And my father was in the C.I.A.!" HA! So sad...

ppl like in the article make me sick. anyone who goes out and buys brands just for the label is idiot to begin with, but these guys go out of their way to buy obscure crap just to be cool.

it's like when nirvana came out w/ "i rather be dead then cool" all the trend-whores started ripping their clothes and became nihilists.

I worked for Marc Jacobs for 3 years and eventuall had to quit because of all the imbecility around me. As far as I am concerned ppl who work in fashion and others who support them should all be put in coal mines to get a reality check, especially fashion obsessed women like that whore from sex in the city.

Guess the same could be said of those who use txtspk in a non-cellular phone related context - just a product of the trend of mobile phones, and the way the trend is to forego proper spelling and grammar for the sake of bending to the market in order to hurriedly type out your message. The fact that you do this, unhappy, says to me that despite your blatant trendiness bashing (which I'm all for) you still find yourself trying to be cool and hip - at least in the sense in which the billboards for Nokia and the ads in newspapers tell me.

I suppose we could put your post down as being "postmodernistically ironic" .

It is unfortunate that such a beautiful thing has been devoured and now emulated by the most incidious of trend stalkers. But this doesn't have to be the end of the quiet nod of appreciation to Gibson characterization in the form of lack-fashion. If you truly support the concept it won't be a trend for you, simply an accepted aspect of your existence, and long after the flighty marketers of cool have moved on to the next anti-trend, you can still enjoy your annonymous dark jeans and plain t-shirts with the personal nivana of being beyond the grasping reach of the market.

i write the way i write because i'm a coder it's a waste of my time to spell check every little post i make on the net. it is a matter of conveniencen, therefore there's a reason for it, not appearance. so pls don't scrutinize my spelling or style, just get the meaning.

I figure, then, you'd be able to type fast and not have to worry about hitting the wrong keys.

This is a literary forum, though. That's what gets us. It might pass on megagames.com or whatever, but on a forum dedicated to the works of a literary big guy, it tends to get a bit annoying. Mistakes are forgivable, but not when they're deliberate. But you do still carry across your meaning well.

Actually, the nit picking is a bit tedious, we are what we are. It should be the substance of the posts that are important not how they're written. If WG started writing in txtspk then there are a lot of people that would follow on here. Lithos, if mistakes are deliberate then they're not mistakes are they, or is it just me being picky?!

If you started writing in textspeak because someone else wrote in textspeak, no matter who they are, then you're a shallow, easily led git. Whom I probably wouldn't worry too much about, because it would be only a matter of time before you joined a death cult or sent your banking details to a Nigerian prince.

I believe that if mistakes are deliberate, then the person making them must be incredibly stupid.

I think of it as having some respect for language. And the irony is not lost on me that people who claim to be coders cannot use a keyboard properly. Christ, no wonder we have all these goddamn patches...

Writing code, for a box of electrical components to process, is one thing, being able to communicate with another sentient being that can interpret what you mean is another. I am also a lover of language but I recognise that language is always in flux and, however irritating it is, it will continue to change. I think it's more a question of environment and convenience that defines the way we communicate. If it were a matter of trying to be trendy I'd simply pretend to be a cynical pseudo intellectual smart arse but there's not enough room for two of them on one board.Also, I'm sure you don't mind me pointing out that you should have written 'you're a shallow, easily led git' and you shouldn't start a sentence with 'And' but you do still carry across your meaning well...Damn, I shd lighten up!

Ah, but that was a genuine mistake - if anything, it proves my point. Thanks for pointing it out to me. I guess if I was makin' one of them thar new-fangled, high-falutin' deliberate hipster mistakes, I would've written that sentence as "ur a shalow eezily led git. LOL letz go down 2 2 teh mall n by teh nu 50xent albem n not go 2 mathz clarz. LOL LOL!!!11"

Oh, and believe me, I'm probably one of the most laid back persons on here. Why else would I [quote]In Zoran's view, Madame Jiang Qing, the late wife of Mao Zedong who imposed the navy blue "Mao suit" uniform upon the People's Republic of China, is the quintessential fashion icon.

"She got a billion people to dress in that outfit, and they looked great!

Atoning for my threadjacking...

Really, does becoming a fashion designer or what involving having Hannibal fucking Lecter have you for dinner? What part of the brain are these people missing?

Wonder if this fool ever stopped to think that, maybe, all the Chinese wore the Mao jacket so they wouldn't appear as dissidents and end up in front of a firing squad?

Bet this guy watches footage of Nazi concentration camps and says, "I wish I could lose weight like that."

I'd have to agree with you on that lithos. I found that section of the article particularly disturbing. It was a really, really shallow look at a very serious situation. I'm surprised it found its way into the article.

Exactly. That article seemed to be missing the point, at least the people in it were. Some of the most important social statements were taken out of context and warped to fit what they wanted. I suppose each interpretation can be different and is dependent on the individual but there must be some limitations....

Lithos, I can just about tolerate txt-spk but I have to agree that Haxor 1337 speak is annoying and typing 'the' as 'teh' should be punishable by death. Don't get me started on 'Estuary English' and the vogue for phrases such as 'nahwotimean?' and 'innit'! I'm all for the occasional txt shorthand though, gives me more time to read my favourite author.